As cold weather comes around and the winter sports and activities resume again, students are given opportunities to start new groups and clubs around the BSM community. This year, senior Shay Kinney Leonhardt decided to start a club involving many hockey and lacrosse players around BSM.

The senior was scrolling through his timeline on social media and came across a post from Barstool Sports of people skating at a local rink who were dressed in full hockey gear, but were also playing with Lacrosse sticks and balls. “I thought it was the coolest thing ever because my main sport is lacrosse, and I also enjoy indulging in the pond hockey season,” Leonhardt said.

After the post, Leonhardt had immediately created a Google Spreadsheet and shared it with the people he thought would also be interested in this league. Within the first five days of the spreadsheet being out, 43 people had signed up to play. “The main interests are coming from the kids who play hockey or lacrosse and lots of people play both,” Leonhardt said.

This league is also expanding into a couple of other students outside of school including Quinn Ehlen who graduated BSM last year.

Shay calls this new league “The Roc Lacrosse League” because the games will be played at the Saint Louis Park Recreation Center which has an outdoor rink nicknamed the Roc. “My friends Gaby Perez and Jack Van Overbeke both live across from the rink and we figured that the rink isn’t occupied as often as the others so we figured that because this rink is close to [BSM] and not as occupied, we could make the games there and reserve ice time,” Leonhardt said.

With the 43 students that joined the league, it equals to about five to seven people for each team including substitutes that will participate in the new league. The rules to the game are quite simple with your typical pick-up style game. “We haven’t actually made an official rulebook yet but, we are thinking it is going to be hockey rules without big hitting because of the center of gravity being above the waste in lacrosse, the hitting could be a lot heavier and you could get more hurt,” Leonhardt said.

The new non-competitive Roc Lacrosse League has taken over the interests of many hockey and lacrosse players throughout BSM. As the water freezes, we will all get to see what this league comes to be. “I am really excited to see what we can make of this,” Leonhardt said.